An important part of a video surveillance system is the possibility to record video and other media content such as audio or alarm events. These recordings allow the user at a later time to e.g. search for particular media data and to track incidents etc.
Another important part of a video surveillance system is the possibility to monitor in real-time the area covered by the surveillance system.
In a subscriber based surveillance system the user would like a service provider to handle the set-up of the surveillance system as well as the media storage and storage services such that the user does not need to configure the surveillance system or any recordings of surveillance data himself. For example, the user should be able to directly connect to the service provider and search and view recordings of the surveillance data using search and retrieval services offered by the service provider.
However, real-time or recorded media data in a home environment might contain very sensitive information that the user would not, under any circumstances, like the service provider to have access to.
Hence, it is important to provide a system such that real-time or stored media data at the service provider site is protected and that the media data only can be accessed by the property owner. Furthermore, it must still be possible for the service provider to access recordings of meta data such as time stamps, video trigging information, alarm data or the like, such that the service provider can provide an efficient searching service for alarms and recordings to the end user.
A system for providing protected storage of data acquired by a data acquisition device is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,477,740 by C. H. Bennet. In U.S. Pat. No. 7,477,740 a data acquisition device, e.g. a video camera with a microphone, connected to a secure encryption processor, is described. The secure encryption processor encrypts data acquired by the data acquisition device before it is transferred to the storage unit. This implies that the data is always stored in encrypted form. Thus, only an authorized person with the correct right access key will be able to decrypt the data.
However, if the data is encrypted according to U.S. Pat. No. 7,477,740 and only being accessible by the user it will be impossible for the service provider to access recordings of meta data such as time stamps, video trigging information, alarm data or the like, such that the service provider can provide an efficient searching service for alarms and recordings to the end user.
This invention describes a solution to the problems mentioned above.